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Cornell team creates tool to detect molecules in the cosmos

September 22nd, 2016

Sept. 22, 2016

Gordon
Stacey, left, Nicholas Cothard, Thomas Nikola and George Gull speak
with Steve Parshley on the video screen during an instrument team
teleconference.

To find the detailed building blocks
of life in the cosmos, a new, third-generation instrument will be
placed on NASA’s SOFIA – the airliner-based Stratospheric Observatory
for Infrared Astronomy.

Professor Gordon Stacey will lead a
Cornell team of researchers and students to develop the cryogenic
scanning Fabry-Perot interferometers, a key tool for detecting distant
molecules.

The team will develop and build the interferometers to
be part of the High Resolution Mid-InfrarEd Spectrometer, or HIRMES.
This instrument will detect neutral atomic oxygen, water, hydrogen and
deuterated (heavy) hydrogen molecules at infrared wavelengths between 28
and 112 microns – one-millionth of a meter.

Detecting these
wavelengths is key to learning how water vapor, ice and oxygen combine
with dust to form planets, according to NASA. First light for HIRMES
aboard SOFIA is slated for spring 2019.

“These very high
spectral-resolution Fabry-Perot interferometers are one of the two key
technological challenges for the successful operation of HIRMES on
SOFIA,” said Stacey, professor of astronomy.